Reviews

Lara Croft Tomb Raider: The Angel of Darkness

"Brand-new game engine designed to fully utilize the power of PlayStation2. Lara is now made up of over 5,000 polygons as opposed to just 500 in previous games." -- www.tombraider.com

"Cutting edge" might be a bit strong, but AOD's graphics are, without a doubt, its biggest selling point. The game's 12 levels look better than anything you've ever seen in a Tomb Raider game before, which should come as no surprise since it's the first next-gen TR game out there (and no, the PS1-quality Dreamcast ports of parts four and five don't count).

However, the game also suffers from a completely unacceptable level of slowdown, especially in the later levels. I've seen L.A. rush-hour traffic move more quickly than many of the areas in AOD. And in an age where Grand Theft Auto: Vice City (and a dozen other PS2 games) can render an endless landscape with nary a loading screen, is there any excuse for AOD's "Parisian Ghettos" level to require four different loading zones for a single block of outdoor environments?

Also, the game's two biggest selling points -- Lara's ya-yas -- look better than ever, though Core should have considered licensing the Dead or Alive "bounce" engine. I don't want to imply that the design team has a lack of familiarity with the female anatomy, but real double-Ds jiggle, boys. If you're going to display them so prominently in the advertising, at least try and get them right!

Advanced Control

Ah, I see. Lara wears a gas mask, which lets her ... run faster?

"Take more direct and fluid control over Lara with an entirely new control system and experience new levels of gameplay with hand-to-hand combat, stealth attacks, last chance grabs, and more." -- www.tombraider.com

Okay, that's just flat-out wrong. AOD has the worst control scheme seen since ... well, since the last Tomb Raider game. Actually, it's even worse. Previous TR games were designed on a "grid," meaning that pressing up on the D-pad would move you one "block" forward. It sounds limiting, but it also means that jumps and block-pushing puzzles were lined up much more clearly. Removing the grid from the game makes the platform-jumping puzzles in the second half of AOD that much more tedious. If you're two or three degrees off in lining up a jump to a tiny platform in the distance, you'll fall and die. Even if you're lined up perfectly, you might still overshoot or undershoot the platform and fall and die.

Add in the fact that Lara controls like an 18-wheeler in reverse, and even simple tasks like walking along a ledge become so much harder than they need to be. Without any exaggeration, AOD's control scheme is the absolute worst that I've seen in any PS2, Xbox, or GameCube game on the market today, and it's inconceivable how such a huge franchise as Tomb Raider could wind up being so thoroughly frustrating and unenjoyable after nearly three years of development. Maybe there's a game out there with a worse control scheme, but I haven't played it. You simply can't enjoy the game because you're constantly afraid that Lara's going to do something that's going to get her killed.

Game Glitches

To top it all off, not only is AOD almost unplayable when it's working, it's also plagued by a host of glitches that will make you glad that you can save the game at any point. In fact, if you're planning on playing this game, I recommend that you save your progress at least every five minutes. If the twitchy controls don't wind up getting you killed, a glitch in the game might.

AOD froze up on me at least half a dozen times. Lines of dialogue repeated like a broken record when I tried to skip them. Lara fell through invisible gaps in the street, walked through invisible gaps in walls, and refused to walk up stairs that she was supposed to be able to climb. At several points, enemies were able to shoot Lara from behind closed doors or solid walls. And that's not even counting some of the more "forgivable" glitches, like the frequent slowdown or a camera that swings drunkenly and occasionally shows the inside of Lara's head (which is empty, by the way). Releasing such an obviously unfinished game is a slap in the face to Eidos's most loyal customers, but charging fifty bucks for the privilege of playing it should be a criminal offense.

Enormous blocks of text try to plug the gaps in the storyline.

Eidos has been pimping out Lara Croft for almost seven years now, and that's a long time to be working the streets. When we first saw her, there was no price we wouldn't pay to have her. She was smart and sexy, and she gave us something that we couldn't get from any other game at the time. But the years have not been kind to Ms. Croft. When we asked her to show us something that would get us excited again, she opted for breast-enhancement surgery instead. Angel of Darkness gives us a prettied-up Lara, but she's still just running through the same motions we first saw seven years ago, and it's just not worth fifty bucks to see her turn her tricks anymore. The Angel of Darkness lives up to absolutely none of its hype and is an early contender for "Worst Game of the Year." I still get chills from remembering the T-Rex from the original Tomb Raider, a video-game moment that AOD not only fails to replicate, but in actuality craps all over.